Harmondale lore: HoMM3 Contested lands vs. MM7

[Mercs]

Lorebeards, I summon thee.

Please help me get things right, because it's driving me nuts, the more I think about it the less sense in makes. So during the course of Contested Lands campaign in HoMM3, Harmondale basically gets independence and a grail installed in Welnin. And from what I understood from reading the wikis, MM7 events take place just a few years after Contested Lands campaign. So where's the Grail? Who the hell is Markham and why a Catherine-endorsed Erathian lord is in charge of Harmondale? Why is Harmondale's status "contested" again? If the war between Erathia and Avlee takes place during the course of MM7, WHERE exactly do the battles take place? Cuz, you know, Harmondale is pretty much sandwiched between those nations, so do they war it out there? Why would lords of harmondale, even the evil ones, want two powerful nations to wage war on their lands? Especially since the whole reason Harmondaleans wanted independence in the Contested Lands HoMM3 campaign was to stop exactly that from happening? Where is the elven populace of Harmondale?

Also, on the side note, is the Nighon Tunnels in MM7 the same Nighon tunnels they used to invade Erathia during the kreegan war? Are dwarves allied with Avlee, since dwarves are a part of Rampart lineup?

Is it just me, or is MM7 just awfully written and disconnected from HoMM3?

[Tomsod]

I suppose they just never aimed for 100% cross-game consistency. Like how there are angels in Celeste, tame harpies in Hall of the Pit, and rocs allied with Nighon warlocks. Or how you open a portal to another world at the end, and then it's never relevant in any sequels. (Unless the portals to Axeoth were somehow linked to it, which is my pet theory.) Or how MM6/7 Kreegan and HoMM3 Inferno are barely even similar!

In this particular instance, perhaps the implication is that in MM7 continuity, Faruk Welnin's rebellion failed. It's a narratively optional campaign, after all. Maybe the mayor Vespin incident mentioned in the journal is supposed to refer to that.

As for the fights, I guess they happen off-map? You can cross any outdoor map in a couple of hours, and then it's a five day travel to the next one. Plenty of space to fight it out.

[Tress]

Consistency between games aren't really that high. So its not really productive to think of MM 7 as first person homm3. As much as people trash Ubi they try to keep those sort of things consistent in their games, but back when MM7 came out such cross game consistency was kinda new thing so dont think we should think about it too much. That least of the issues this matter have, like Warlocks are supposed to be predominately male as seen in h1-2 and stated in homm3 hero bio, but its other way around in mm7.Such things can be poked infinitely.
Still of someone relly wishes, we can rationalize that contested lands seen in h3 are not same as harmondale, but just another cluster of theese contested lands that still didnt get independence and were under Erathias control. Considering those are pseudo middle ages, one barony/duchy that could be considered state and even moderatley successful could be as small as some 50x100 km. Just play crusader kings and splintering of small duchies is insane, so its not realm of impossibility that there are several of those mixing around in times of chaos between two larger empires.
This of course raises some question no-one ever answered, how exacly large is enroth / erathia etc. Size of europe, size of British islands ? either way it can work , but in case we are saying its closer to Europe , there can be limitless count of small duchies that slip under radar.

[Tomsod]

Still of someone relly wishes, we can rationalize that contested lands seen in h3 are not same as harmondale, but just another cluster of theese contested lands that still didnt get independence and were under Erathias control.

Both the town the campaign is centered on, and the area around your castle, are named "Welnin", so that's unlikely. Unless there's two of them?

[Tress]

Considering pretty much only reference is cathedrals name if i am not wrong , thats not really a huge thing to say this for certain.Also at no point its said that harmondale is part of this free area. There might as well be another town 50 km away that's center of this. Lets say there is town that proclaimed independence somewhere further, now lord Markham who understood things are getting messy and was baron or whatever in that area and was supposed to be subject for Erathia very thoughtfully got rid of that particular domain so not to get involved with any of powers there. So my point being , town in mm7 is certainly not same as castle we build grail in, first of which is that town is called harmondale ,as seen by signposts. Area may be called Welnin with some stretch , but there is no indication harmondale is same town we have in homm3
I actually live in country that has legacy of german overseer castles scattered around, and in country side distance between them is like 50 or so km, and each was semi autonomous , so if few of them would gain independence, doesnt mean all do. In our case we just can assume local baron bailed before war broke out. MM with its world building do thing that we assume we see the world but world cant be so unpopulated so only logical assumption there is way more towns around we don't ever see. Now if we take that in account then lots of stuff can be explained, by simple fact we see only few areas . But truth porably is that NWC simply couldnt create an open world as they are restricted by tech of time and time to make game, and constraints of creating actually playable game with some narrative.

[cthscr]

Both the town the campaign is centered on, and the area around your castle, are named "Welnin"

Nitpick: from MM7 texts it could be get as an area south to castle only.

[Tomsod]

AFAIK there are exactly two uses of the toponym in MM7 texts: the Harmondale city temple is named WelNin Cathedral, and the GM Sword teacher is said to live "in a small village in Welnin, just south of the city of Harmondale". This gives me the impression that Welnin is the general area which includes both Harmondale the city and the unnamed village. Or it's a mistake and they meant to write "a village in Harmondale, south of the city of Welnin".

[Tress]

it can be argued that area or larger area is Welnin, but the town we "start" in is certainly town of Harmondale and by refference whole area is named as such same as lets say blackshire although outskirts of it arent really town , otherwise it wouldnt be written on the signpost. It would be pretty strange to give direction to area of "Harmondale" near crossroads that directly lead to town of Welnin.
But its generally same for all of locations, we take Tatalia , do we see any fortress towns , or place king Trelosk lives, or do really whole Erathia consists of one city (lets abstract and say those 20 houses are big city for games purpose) and 3 houses/ There is ton we dont see, and if we say Welnin is some country sized area of Welnin, town of harmondale can be just on edge of it, and then it kinda works. But of course again its really not productive to thnk of mm7 as homm3 in first person.

[Mercs]

As for the fights, I guess they happen off-map? You can cross any outdoor map in a couple of hours, and then it's a five day travel to the next one. Plenty of space to fight it out.

Travel time is irrelevant here. Just like we presume that Erathia is bigger than MM7 map of "Erathia" that has Steadwick in it, we could also presume at least some of that "travel time" around Harmondale is still Harmondale the region. And thus, any combat would inevitably affect the local populace and hurt the income of local lords. Thus, the "Contested Lands".

Also I'm pretty sure the place wouldn't be such a hot spot for wars in Antagarich history if it wasn't based in geography. Just like, eh, you know, Ukraine... since Barrow Downs and the dwarven city are relatively close, and hence the mountains, we may presume Harmondale is in the same place geographically as Ukraine, having pathing blockers like mountains/bodies of water/dense forests (Contested Lands were aggressively deforested by Erathians in the lore) practically funnel any coming army into it's lands. I know I might be overthinking it, but still...

[kalyl]

Lorebeards, I summon thee.

Please help me get things right, because it's driving me nuts, the more I think about itamong us the less sense in makes. So during the course of Contested Lands campaign in HoMM3, Harmondale basically gets independence and a grail installed in Welnin. And from what I understood from reading the wikis, MM7 events take place just a few years after Contested Lands campaign. So where's the Grail? Who the hell is Markham and why a Catherine-endorsed Erathian lord is in charge of Harmondale? Why is Harmondale's status "contested" again? If the war between Erathia and Avlee takes place during the course of MM7, WHERE exactly do the battles take place? Cuz, you know, Harmondale is pretty much sandwiched between those nations, so do they war it out there? Why would lords of harmondale, even the evil ones, want two powerful nations to wage war on their lands? Especially since the whole reason Harmondaleans wanted independence in the Contested Lands HoMM3 campaign was to stop exactly that from happening? Where is the elven populace of Harmondale?

Also, on the side note, is the Nighon Tunnels in MM7 the same Nighon tunnels they used to invade Erathia during the kreegan war? Are dwarves allied with Avlee, since dwarves are a part of Rampart lineup?

Is it just me, or is MM7 just awfully written and disconnected from HoMM3?

Markham is indeed an Erathian lord, but his presence in Harmondale might be explained by the complex political situation. It's not uncommon for lords of one kingdom to have influence or control over territories in another, especially in times of transition or instability.

[Wrue1939]

The HoMM3 Contested Lands campaign concludes with Harmondale's independence and the Grail's installation in Welnin. However, in MM7, the region is again "contested" and seemingly lacks the Grail.

[raekuul]

The implication in MM7 is that Markham really does not want to be in charge of Harmondale after all (he can probably see the writing on the wall with respect to the next Elven/Human war over Harmondale) and is doing his best to get rid of it. It's only his good fortune that the player characters end up being competent. And it's not like you can't just side with Erathia during the conflict anyway.

The canonical relationship between the mainline games and heroes games has always been "It's Complicated" anyway - MM6 had a distinct advantage here since it didn't have any other mainline games to draw from, but because Heroes 3 happens almost entirely on Antagarich (and essentially concurrently!) it's only canonical insofar as Escaton wasn't ultimately responsible for the destruction of the world.

And MM7 doesn't actually impact the world's metaplot in any meaningful way anyway, mostly because the Heroes playerbase rebelled at the idea of a tech-based faction that either ending of MM7 would have led to (Homegrown for Team Gloaming, or Benevolent-but-Offworld for Team Lambent), but also because the Regnan fleet would have been trashed eventually by the Hero of Jadame anyway since that was just as much of an existential threat to Ravenshore as Escaton was.

[LucyCoffee]

it's not just you; there are indeed some inconsistencies and loose ends between the storylines of HoMM3 and MM7. This could be due to different development teams working on each game or evolving interpretations of the game world over time.